'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎53] (90/748)

FROM TEHERAN TO ISFAHAN
53
1820, Ussher 3,000 souls in 1861, Goldsmid 500 families in 1874.
The total population of Julfa was given to me as 2,500, of whom
eighty per cent, are Armenians. 1
There are practically four distinct ingredients in the population
of Julfa; (1) the Armenians proper, constituting the bulk of the
Armenian community; (2) the United or Catholic Armenians, a
community gma u schism; (3) the Church of England Mission ; and
(4) the European mercantile and Telegraph element. A few
words about each of these. The Armenians proper are under the
spiritual jurisdiction of an Arachnurt or Archbishop, who is
invariably a monk from Echmiadzin. He resides in a building,
formerly a convent, adjoining the Egglesia Wang (Big Church) or
Cathedral. Attached to this establishment is also a nunnery,
whose annals have not been free from flagrant scandal, and which
shelters a number of old spinsters who visit the sick, teach, and
knit socks. The younger and more active part of the male popu
lation is annually drafted to India, Java, and other places in the
East, where, in situations of business and profit, they speedily lose
all desire to return to their unprepossessing homes. The con
sequence is, that only the residuum is left behind; and while some
of these are engaged in business as carpenters, market gardeners,
etc., a good many have embarked on a trade which secures them
neither popularity nor consideration, viz., the manufacture of
liquor, quite as much for surreptitious Persian, as well as for
avowed home consumption. Dr. Wills, who lived in Julfa many
years, presents a very unfavourable portrait of the Julfa Armenian.
So common is drunkenness, that his Armenian cook would say to
him on a Sunday night: ' Dinner finished, sir; if you no orders,
I go get drunk with my priest; 5 while of the average specimen
he drew the following picture :—
The Hamadan Armenian is hardworking and respectable, if
occasionally a drunkard, looked on by his Persian fellow-subjects
as a friend and a good citizen. The Isfahani looks upon the Julfa
Armenian as a race apart, and merely the panderer to his vices and
the maker of intoxicating liquors ; and the hangdog Armenian with his
sham Turk or European dress, and the bottle of arrack in his pocket,
scowls staggering along in secure insolence, confident in the moral
1 For the Armenians of Julfa, vide a report by Eugene Bore in his Corre-
spondance et Memoires, vol. ii. pp. 374-92 ; and for modern Julfa, vide C. J. Wills,
In the Land, tfc., caps. xii. and xiv.; and Mrs. Bishop, Journeys in Persia, vol. i.
letters xii. xiii.